As we saw the other day, the tradition in French comics festivals of free sketches ends up being hard on creators. Mind you, they are overall happy to come and greet readers and make them happy with a sketch, but given they are basically unpaid for the work (besides transportation and lodging) they provide under their host, they think of it a bit as a corv&eacutee, that is the duty of unpaid labor outside his fields that a peasant owed his feudal lord.

As a result, the idea has been spreading of late to have creators be paid when doing signings (French-only). Not by the recipient of the sketch: no one, least of all the creators themselves, seem to want that; when asked on the matter, Shyle Zalewski, who writes, draws, and self-publishes queer (and more) strips, and comes to festivals on their own stand, was clear: As a creator I’ve never been paid for signings and I have to admit I wouldn’t mind it happening, on the sole condition that it would be for the festival to pay. For instance having the readers pay for a sketch as it is sometimes the case in the US is unthinkable to me. Most creators seem to agree.

So while different variants of such a payment scheme are being thought up, the one that dominates would be for the host to pay the hosted creators more or less on the basis of the time spend. That would acknowledge the fact that creators are, if not performing, at least contributing to the animation of the stand as, well, animators. After all, it’s typically not just the reader who requested the sketch who gets to watch the sketch being drawn, but also the next two or three in line at least.

This is easier said than done, however. Publishers and festival organizers resist the idea, and with some justification to the extend that their financial equations are already hard to balance as it is: for instance publishers warn that if that was implemented, they would scale back their presence in festivals and only remain in ones where they are confident they will not lose money … leading Obion to the (not entirely serious) conclusion that, for lack of any other solution, impressionable young creators, too happy to sign in a prestigious location, will end up paying for the whole scheme (French-only).

This raises many more questions. For instance, as part of my pseudojournalistic activities I may very well wait in line for a signing for the sole purpose of having some access to the creator, without requesting a sketch, for instance for additional discussion after a lecture or panel. But if the creator is paid to animate the stand, would he still have time for discussion without sketching?

But while these questions deserve answers, they should not be a reason not to implement the idea. Not to mention some additional benefits would exist: worker protection would kick in for instance, making it easier to justify closing the signing activities at the scheduled time, etc. Overall, paying creators for their time would be fairer for everyone involved.

I find that the idea of paying creators (who, after all, are not creating when at a show) ties directly into the idea of Shows Not Being Worth It Sometimes; cf: C Spike Trotman and the ever-expanding ECCC:

Looking forward to ECCC, but not thrilled it’s getting longer and longer. Thursday will be a full day this year instead of a preview night. Too many comic cons are going for this size queen bigger-is-better thing, and it’s just exhausting.

One of the best cons I do all year is SPX, which is Saturday, Sunday, DONE. More days doesn’t automatically mean more money.

And I have shit to do! Longer cons means more days trying to run a publishing company from a hotel room, for me. Not ideal.

A big (but not the sole) motivator for ditching SDCC was it began swallowing a week of my life for diminishing returns. I genuinely hope ECCC doesn’t start going down that same road.

Guarantee some income? You’ll see more creators willing to brave the marathon shows. Thanks as always to FSFCPL for adding his cross-Atlantic perspective on what’s likely a universal dilemma.

An entirely new work crisis has developed; the only good news is this one won’t steal time for me any later than tomorrow. As it stands, I have time to point you at something interesting, and then back to the crisis.

Rob Balder of Erfworld has bee cranking out a deep story with huge amounts of lore (and terrible, terrible in-jokes) for more’n ten years now. For most of that time, he’s been trying to find ways to pay for the strip’s art contributors and support himself via a non-sucky mechanism. Having finally had it with his ad networks pulling crap that is beneath contempt (pop-unders, sound, fake virus scams), Balder is trying something new. It’s kinda premised on being able to ride what’s likely fake money, but bonus points for a) trying something new; b) to keep crappy ads away from his users, and c) gamifying it.

It definitely worked in alpha. We mined enough Ethereum to be worth it. Not everybody’s computer could manage it, but nobody’s computer broke, and there’s no reason it should have. We learned some things that let us make a plan. Everybody who participated in the test got sent some goodies (thanks Renter, Bandaid, Danielle, Omnimancer & sdub!) and I created the Special: Digging badge for them:

There’s the gamification; Balder’s created a displayable badge within the forum structure at Erfworld, and if you mine Etherium for support of the site, you get the badge, and you get a random chance at other shinies you can show off. He’s got his users organized into teams, with bragging rights associated for the team that does more successfully. He’s got a trading mechanism set up. And a day into the beta, it appears to be working.

I’m deeply dubious that Balder can keep ahead of the crash points and the scams and the instability and rampant thievery that are endemic to cryptocurrency¹. I’m deeply troubled that the environmental overheads in crypto mining (as a whole) are causing measurable and accelerating damage to our commons (ie: Earth) and contributing to global climate change. I can’t fault him for trying, but I also can’t but help hope that he finds something better to meet his costs (and food, and rent) quickly.

Last week was … buhhh. Let us not speak of last week, but rather move forward.¹ Catching up on news is the order of the day.

From Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin, a pointer to a story I would have otherwise missed; The Beat has a terrific interview with Pénélope Bagieu, so good that I’m not even mad to discover that Heidi Mac has gone and added her own French-speaking contributor. The interview mostly concerns the soon-to-be-published Brazen (née Culottées), a review of which will be forthcoming here at Fleen.

Most fascinating was the discussion of the edits that are made to the list of accomplished ladies in different countries, including the fact that the US edition (by :01 Books) omits the story of Indian bandit queen Phoolan Devi. The reason given is need for the book to be YA, which required removing mentions of rape from Devi’s story, which removed much of the impetus for her career of banditry². Lots of good stuff, so go read Bagieu’s talk with Philippe Leblanc.

From C Spike Trotman, news that the new, Iron Circus edition of Evan Dahm’s Rice Boy is now available in the world (indeed, reports on the wubs indicate people are finding it in stores). Dahm’s first story from the very strange these are alien peoples and cultures, not humans with one feature distinctly different world of Overside are some of the best mythmaking and worldbuilding to be found in any medium, and if you haven’t read any of his stuff, get on that right now. Punch up those sales numbers and maybe we’ll see more ICC-published Overside stories.

From Steve Hamaker, designer, colorist, and all-around stellar comicker³, news that the second print volume of his webcomic, Plox, is now Kickstarting. Plox, if you’re not a reader, is definitely one of those stories that does better in big chunks that twice a week, so if you’ve been holding off, now’s the time to jump in.

The campaign has an unusually low backer count for the funds raised so far (he’s just over 51% in the first week of a 30 day campaign), low enough that it’s outside the range where the FFF mk2 works well. The McDonald Ratio does pretty well in these situations, though, and it calls for Plox volume 2 to collect about US$11.7K, which is comfortably over the US$8K goal. The other piece of good news is that the backer averages are a full US$70, primarily because a significant number of people are pledging at the US$150 level for a cameo. You cannot beat super-fans.

Spam of the day:

Patron Initial Coin Offering

Oh, well I’m sure to trust this digital Ponzi scheme because I’m assured it’s on a whitelist.

Actually, I kinda do trust them because their logo is a moustache. Don’t judge me.

² Although the story of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee has a similar inclusion of repeated spousal rapes, which were just as much an impetus for her career of social work, justice for women, and rehabilitation of child soldiers. Then again Gbowee was a grown woman and Devi was ten years old.

³ Seriously, have you seen the list of people he collaborates with? Jeff Smith, Terry Moore, Judd Winick, the Flight folks, Scott Kurtz … the list goes on and on.

The ALAawards for children’s (and YA, and middle grades, and other variety of younger humans) literature were given out earlier today, and there’s a webcomics connection that we are happy to report. The first person I saw with the news was Colleen AF Venable¹, beating out even the reporter contingent from the School Library Journal: The Stonewall Book Award (for English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience) went to Little & Lion and The 57 Bus, but one of the two Honor Books was As The Crow Flies.

You may remember from my report of the 2017 edition of Lyon BD that sketches are free as a rule. But that is pretty much the only thing that is free in French comics festivals: entrance is paid, exhibitors sell their wares, etc. The point where all these concerns intersect is the table, which is more than the physical space the creator can work against²: it represents the support his host provides (line management in particular), and, conversely, the contribution the creator makes to the host’s presence.

The host can be the festival itself, in the case of invited creators, or is more typically the creator’s publisher; in some cases bookshops organize signings around a festival. And in all cases they hope to profit: the festival by attracting attendees, and the publisher or a bookshop by selling books. And in order to ensure that, publishers and bookshops will often require a book be purchased before you can get a sketch (though it need not necessarily be the one sketched in); and that will not guarantee getting one, you won’t if you come too late for instance, but this means sketches are free only to the extent the creator is not paid for it. For popular creators the lucky few who will get a sketch are even picked by chance draw, so as not to overwhelm the creator.

As for creators themselves, besides the inherent unfairness, there is also the more practical matter that, given the money incentive, the ecosystem grows around them to mine the seam³. This mean that creators both have to spend more time in more festivals, away from their living-earning activities and their families, and have to contend with longer and longer lines of people waiting for sketches (three-legged camping stools are a common sight in comics festivals), with the resulting entitlement issues you can expect … not that this prevents some of these sketches from ending up on eBay, anyway.

The result? While of course you shouldn’t take this strip too literally (this is autobio, after all), creators are often exhausted at the end of the day (full disclosure: I contributed to the exhaustion; unfortunately I did not encounter much else to report on in Paris Manga). And yes, I have witnessed for instance people trying to squeeze themselves at the end of the line even as the end of signing time was closing in … however, I haven’t been (un)lucky enough to witness that (fortunately exceptional) kind of case (French-only).

Can the situation be improved? Proposed leads to that end will be the subject of a later post.

Hey, my name is Richard!
I`m a professional writer and I`m going to change your lifes on?e and for all

² Though in case of need a creator may be able to do [without even that (21st photo; full disclosure: that is my copy of Héro-ine-s Yan Le Pon is sketching in in this photo).

³ Most French comics festivals are run as non-profits (and that includes Angoulême), which moderates the expansion somewhat on that side, nevertheless they too benefit from growing bigger (they get more press, more attention from professionals, etc).

A question that has long puzzled me is why Rosemary Mosco has never had a collection of her comics work. Prints, sure — and they’re a delight — and a shirt or two are in her store, but no comprehensive collection of the past decade or so’s worth of delightful looks at the natural world. That puzzlement ends today:

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: I have a Bird and Moon collection coming out on April 17th through Andrews McMeel! I showed my advance copy to a discerning test reader and she described it as “delicious”. Preorder here: https://www.amazon.com/Birding-My-Fav …

Birding Is My Favorite Video Game will be coming from Andrews McMeel (who more normally publish collections of comic strips¹, from Universal Press Syndicate, of which they’re a division) in April, and judging from the sample pages they’ve included², it’s going to be a fairly comprehensive gathering of her work. We’ll get the turkey vulture, and bird callmnemonics, of course, and I’d be astonished if we didn’t get misleading animal names.

Birding Is My Favorite Video Game releases on 17 April, or you can pre-order it now. With any luck, Ms Mosco will make some signing appearances and we’ll all get to tell her how rad she is in person.

Spam of the day:
I thought about including a spam for mail-order brides and making a joke about Briding as a video game, but darn it, I’m all out. We’ll have to make do with this, instead:

We Have Detected Unusual Activity With Your Gmail Account on Your Computer
Login Has Occurred on 2/4/2018 @ 9:06 AM EST
From IP: 34.124.12.1 Geo Location Found: Eastern Russia
If This Was Not You Please Call the Google Security Team
(Be at your computer)
1 855-739-7819

It would be a tremendous shame if a bunch of us were to call that number and point out to the bozos that answer that they are very bad people who are very bad at being scammers, and generally waste their time. I called to tell them that my dog’s breath smells like dog food and they didn’t like that at all.

Anybody that follows this page know that my crusty, cynical exterior last only so long as I’m not in proximity or otherwise thinking about the work or actual persons of Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson. They do work that is lovely to look at, heartwarming to read, and just plain fun.

A couple of years back, their tribute to the spirit of Pokémon, Capture Creatures, morphed from painting series to art book to monthly comic, which hit a prolonged hiatus in the middle of the story. The delays have been resolved, though, and Capture Creatures Volume 1 is about to be published as a trade paperback. Getting everybody back in Capture Creatures mood brought Gibson to Fleen for a chat, and a bit of schedule-clearing made Dresistadt available as well.

FG: There will be new Capture Creatures this year!! I just wrote a mini!Becky Dreistadt: I started thumbing it out yesterday! Actually immediately after this we’re going to be working on it a little more.

Fleen: A Capture Creatures mini, or something else?FG: Capture Creatures mini. But I’ve started working away on the second part of the main story, just chipping away at it!

Fleen: So we get the long-awaited issue 5, or will this be a new story?FG: Yeah, Issue 5 is going to be Issues 5-8 to get the intro story done. Then it’s graphic novels from there!

Fleen: The key question is: Who’s publishing issues 5 to 8?BD: Us!FG: I really like Capture Creatures, I’m open to other people putting it out, but since we did the Capture Creatures encyclopedia independently first I’ve realized I want a little more control of it than most of the books I write.

Fleen: If you’re publishing what’s the sales channel? How do peeps give you money for awesome comics?FG: It’s back to basics I think. We may have to visit old Uncle Kickstarter and shake him down. It’s been awhile. We’re considering a lot of options, we want to keep the team of [inker] Kelly Bastow, [letterer] Britt Wilson, and [colorist] Katy Farina intact.

They’re amazing, they’re really busy but we want to try make it happen. Also I want to fairly compensate who we work with, which makes funding projects tricky. Maybe Patreon? Maybe it’s time.

Fleen: What’s the time frame for 5 – 8, and then graphic novels? The first four issues appeared pretty regularly, then a hiatus of what? Three years now?BD: Right now we don’t have a set time frame, we’re hoping to start releasing stuff this year. Since I’m working full-time at Disney its tricky to set hard dates. Also we’ve got Bustletown and a couple brand new kids books in the pipeline too.FG: Yeah the hiatus wasn’t something that anyone wanted, it did give us time to get Bustletown fired up which is a silver lining. In the end the first issue did amazing and subsequent issues did not for a variety of reasons outside of our control. The direct market is hard.

Surprisingly we had a huge amount of free promo from Diamond and that really contributed to having great early sales. There’s also this huge problem where kids don’t go to comic stores, unless it’s like Telegraph or Beguiling or SHQ.BD: My father is afraid to go to comic stores and he used to draw comics.Fleen: Why’s your father afraid, Becky?BD: He thinks nerds are gonna be mean to him. He’s scared of nerds.Fleen: He’s met Frank, right?FG: He thinks I’m all right. [winky emoji]

Fleen: So for those that came in late, want to do a quick recap on Capture Creatures?BD: So after a cataclysmic event all the wild animals in this particular corner of the world have disappeared, but on an island off the coast it appears the creatures have returned but with strange unexplained powers.

It’s a story about Tamzen, a young girl who wants to protect the creatures from a shadowy group of people who are trying to capture them and use them for their own nefarious purposes!Fleen: Tamzen annnnd?
Frank: A character who looks suspiciously like 2015 Frank except he is a child. I can’t believe Becky did this to me.Fleen: You love it.FG: I have become more ok with it as time has gone on.BD: Also Teddy who is a grown up boy-scout. (Park ranger but with cute outfit).

Fleen: So after you finish the Capture Creatures intro story, it’s graphic novels. What’s the plan there?FG: World-building! There’s so much fun you can have in a world where essentially dogs can breathe fire! I want to send these kids everywhere!BD: More creatures! Cute moments!

Fleen: What kinds of stories do you get to tell in Capture Creatures that you can’t in Bustletown, and vice versa?FG: Bustletown is more about everyday problems that people face and they’re solved with levity. It’s really light and fun and small. Capture Creatures is going to be much more dense.

Fleen:And what about them side dishes? And by side dishes, I mean kids books.
Becky: One is called My Pet King, about a kid who gets a king as a pet but the king is very small and lives in a hamster cage. The other is Animal Cake Party, it’s about a kitten named Sprinkle who wants to hang out with the cool wild animals in the woods.FG: The latter is a subject matter we are very comfortable with. Animals and cakes.Fleen: These sound suspiciously like Golden Books.

BD: We haven’t got far along with to publisher pitch, I’d love to have an official Golden Book one day!FG: One day!

Fleen: So with all of the Disney work that Becky’s got, how much of Capture Creatures plus Bustletown plus side dishes plus manage a chunk of Kickstart and/or Patreon gets done in 2018?BD: I’ve started roughing out the fourth part of Bustletown, so that’s on it’s way.FG: We’re starting slow with Capture Creatures, trying to wrap up this mini pretty quick. Focusing on making sure Volume 1 gets the attention it deserves.BD:Animal Cake Party only has about five pages left to pencil, then I have to do a couple paintings for it before it’s ready to go out as a pitch. It’s a tricky balance but it’s happening!FG: I think what makes Capture Creatures a little easier is we have a team. On the mini Becky will be inking it, the style is going to be a little different, but we want to get Kelly back as soon as she’s available for Volume 2.

Fleen: So people that want to be up to date on new Capture Creatures can go back and read issues 1-4, which are getting released as a trade paperback. Why get the book instead of prowling the single-issue bins?FG: It’s the first half of the Capture Creatures story. Honestly I think it’s the best looking monthly comic. Our team did an amazing job on it especially considering the time constraints. We’ve been lucky in that we’ve been given the time to go back, edit, fix up little mistakes we made through the process.

It’s a really beautiful book and I thought going back and re-reading it after two years I’d just see every flaw and … I loved it. I still love Capture Creatures and working on this book made me excited for its future.BD: It’s out by the end of the month! Direct market pre-orders are over, but you can get it online from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, even Target. We also have a signing at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA on March 3rd!

Fleen: And where else will people be able to see you in the next couple of months? ECCC, MoCCA, TCAF?FG: It’s the first ECCC we’re missing in years!!!! Our first convention of the year is TCAF. Then it’s on to SDCC and SPX! Something had to give so we could make comics again. Turns out doing 8-15 conventions a year isn’t compatible with producing a pile of comics.

Fleen: And I’m guessing that people can see you streaming PUBG pretty regularly?FG: Haha oh boy. Yeah I didn’t think that being a game stream boy was going to be a part of my life, but here I am. I hadn’t played a shooter since I was a kid really. But hanging out with pals playing this game has been a blast.BD: We also do a stream where we play Kingdom Hearts with our friends! I’m going to start streaming more art and other games too.FG: It’s been cool, new people are finding our work. Some people just think I’m a PUBG streamer which is super weird, I’m not even particularly good at it. They’re surprised when they find out I make comics and work on cartoons.

Fleen: Sounds like you’ve found a new nicheFG: My life is just niche after niche. Maybe they’ll all add up to one thing eventually. Wrestling, comics, vintage kids books, cats, weird video games.BD: Candy.Fleen: Booze.FG: Still love it!

We at Fleen thank Becky Dreistadt and Frank Gibson for their time. Capture Creatures Volume 1 is available everywhere on 27 February.

Spam of the day:

Up to $950 Off Sakai Rammers!

Dunno, don’t want to know, and I’m fairly certain this has nothing to do with Usagi Yojimbo.

The annual SPX table lottery hits next week, although there appears to be some confusion. Nothing on the SPX page, but their Twitter account has retweeted people saying the lottery opens on February 12th and runs through the 26th. Last year, the Official Deal About The Lottery went up five days in advance, which means we should have this year’s iteration up, but don’t. If you want to get a table for 2018, I’d check the SPX site daily between now and Monday. Those who make it past the curation/lottery process will be in Bethedsa, Maryland, on 15-16 September.

Meanwhile, the MoCCA Festival is coming 7-8 April in Manhattan, and details are firming up. Nothing specific on programming yet, and the exhibitors list looks like it might still be for 2018 (it’s missing names of people I know will be there, and there’s a future reference to a book debuting in 2017), but I’d expect all of that to be updated in the next two-three weeks.

And TCAF, perennial favorite of everybody that’s ever been, comes up quickly after on 12-13 May in Toronto, and they’ve just done their first announcements for this year’s festival. Show posters (by Fiona Smyth and Ho Che Anderson) and featured guests (Anderson and Smyth are joined by fellow Canadians Cecil Castellucci, Michael DeForge, Michael Comeau¹, and Hartley Lin, as well as Eddie Campbell, Audrey Niffenegger, and Ron Wimberly). Given past years, expect the guest list to expand by a factor of three or more, with many more international (especially Japanese) creators to come.

Not a festival, but still cool: Nick Park, clay animator extraordinaire, will be visiting the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco this Sunday, 11 February, in conjunction with his new movie, Early Man². It’s his first solo directorial effort on a feature-length film, and while there appears to be neither Wallace³ nor Gromit in sight, there will surely be plenty of oversized hands and teeth, and a surfeit of increasingly-elaborate sight gags.

A presentation on the making of Early Man (featuring the animation leads) runs from 5:00pm to 6:00pm, followed by a conversation between Park and Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out) from 6:30pm to 7:30pm. Admission is free for CAM members, US$25 for the rest.